Google: Annoying and not so annoying recent changes

The new "Social" search!

Google has long become a synonym for search... "Google it!" is something we often say and do a number of times every day/hour. And I've been doing the same for last 8 years and was able to find useful result with ease. But recently something went wrong, terribly wrong... there was no relevant result on Google even while looking to as much as "Page 3"... I'm convinced that in normal use, no one ever has to go beyond "Page 1" and I believe what I was searching was a normal query (tried all sorts of permutations and combinations of keywords and their synonyms). A normal question on php related stuff... but all I got was frustation with results displaying how to do those things in Android or Javascript or dont know what. The question then arise is why it was showing such results?

Well, the answer to that is trivial. Because, for last couple of months I have been doing search for results related to Android and Javascript while I was working on couple of projects. And now even when I'm searching with keyword "php"... results shows up Android and Javascript fixes... all thanks to tracking my search history and intelligent guessing made on my queries.

Secondly, if you are frequently selecting a couple of sites from search results the next time you search, these sites get higher preference even though they may not have relevant information for the search you made. What was the problem with the plain old search that provided the results irrespective of my interaction but depending upon the content? Why so much emphasis on making everything social? And if the same site (for example Stack Overflow) has more than one relevant result, why not show them at the first place rather than a small hyperlink saying "Get more discussion results"?

And call it a coincidence, I just happened to find this article (Introducing the New Bing: Spend Less Time Searching, More Time Doing) via codeproject newsletter which made me seriously think considering a change to Bing! (at least they are keeping social separate from normal search).

Location specific customization... grrr....

Another annoying thing happening lately is Google tracking my location and changing my default from Google.com to Google.ch even after I made Google.com as default search engine in Chrome (yes, a Google product). Even my Blog preview is in German (I suppose) though my blog interface where I'm composing this is in English. Com'on Google, if I'm in Switzerland does not mean I can read German or French. So why change to something else from what I had been using for so-so long? Why?

The missing simplicity of old Google interfaces!

Change some Settings:

A couple of days back, the time-zone settings for my GMail changed by itself and then I had to "Google It" to find how to restore it. The simple interface of Google that made me like it so much (over Yahoo & Hotmail) is getting cluttered day-by-day. For simple setting like timezone for my email, I had to do about 10 clicks on 4 or 5 different screens (for the actual process, ignoring the wrong ones I made).

New GMail Interface:

Anyone with comments on new GMail interface? Sorry to say, the old one was much better without requiring me to scroll separately in each sub frames or do a tradeoff between seeing more options for mail (labels) or making my chat list longer.

New Blogger Interface:

I tried the new blogger interface and within minutes was back to the older version... and praying that it stays longer and am not forced to change to new one!

But not all is BAD... There are a couple of welcome changes/ updates

Google Play!

Finally, better late than never! Now its much easier to browse and choose apps for effortless installation not only for my Android, but more importantly for my father's android sitting miles away from him  (all I need is to log-in through his account). Just loved it! Not to say, a fairly neat and intuitive interface as well.
Do I expect Chrome store to merge with this, well it sounds like a possibility to me!

Google +

Well I would simply say Google has got this one way better compared to the new timeline interface on Facebook (where again I'm sticking with the old profile page and hoping they dont force me to change anytime soon, scare about people getting access to all the old posts with one click unless I spend some hours choosing what to keep public and what private and hate those ugly name labels on friends' display pics).
Sadly, Google+ is not catching up... people not willing to migrate from Facebook or are simply too tired to make yet another social network profile or have made it (like myself) but do not actively maintain it like the old Orkut profile.

Google+: Limited Invites - Actual constraints or A Marketing Gimmick?

Google+: Google's yet another attempt to socialize the users. Launched ever so silently in end of June, 2011... Google+ has caught the attention of both - techies as well as non-techies alike.

Google has previously used the limited invites strategy for its mail service to a great effect but will it work this time? All of us can speculate and only time shall provide the answer!

Here is my first take on Google+
+ves

1. The BUZZ - Creating excitement and curiosity among people is important for the success of a product or service. It provides with the initial user base who are generally the early adapters and more often than not are also the trend setters. Thereafter, it is the usefulness of the offering which becomes important. Google has managed to create a BUZZ around its latest offering. Despite a silent launch, well placed demo, technology blogs and limited invites has done the trick to generate curiosity among the huge base social networkers (facebookers, orkuters, and others). But how long will it limit users in its trial launch?
   
2. (Facebook & Twitter)+ - Google+ combines the major feature of Twitter (aka following people) and Facebook (broadcast updates) in one single platform which is a natural extension but how crucial it is for the users remains to be seen. It is worth mentioning that both the features i.e. following people and broadcasting updates were initially launched with not so successful Google Buzz. However, I did like the feature of being able to control who can follow you.
   
3. The Google Power - "Powered by Google" in my opinion counts as a major factor. The simplicity of GMail was something that inspired me to move on it and still use it as my primary id and so was the case with Orkut. This was precisely the reason for not liking Facebook initially, but it has come a long way since then in terms of its user interface and offering, it has moved from just being a platform to pass time on the crazy apps and quizzes to a platform for sharing almost everything. The huge GMail userbase provides with captive clients.

-ves

1. Limited Invites may hurt - YES! I mentioned limited invites as a good strategy in creating the BUZZ but here we are talking about a social network and people form the essence of it. The larger the user base bigger the network, so why the limited invites?
   
2. Now your friends can further share your picasa albums - Till now I used picasa for sharing pics with selected people but Google+ force you to link your picasa albums with your profile enabling your connections to further share it... some users may not like it!
   
3. Circle, Spark, Huddles, Hangouts, etc. Are they really very different from existing options? Can the existing players not provide such features? Doesn't feel so! Facebook has already started video chat and you can group your friends under various lists, create groups and do a group chat, plan a group event, etc. etc.
   
4. Effect on your GMail account - How does creating and customizing your Google+ profile affects your GMail contacts remains to be seen. When my HTC Hero running on Android synced all my GMail contacts and mixed with my existing phone contacts from my previous Nokia phones, I wasn't particularly happy and I'm still using phone with hidden GMail contacts as it makes difficult to search the contacts with phone numbers among a list of email contacts.

Having said all this, I should also state that I haven't used Google+ till now and like many others waiting eagerly to try it out. Will post another update from a user perspective after playing around with it.